Religion: Good or Bad?

[Pangloss62]

As a strict relativist, materialist, and one lacking "spirituality" alltogether, all I can say is that religion does exist, and it effects people. I try to avoid it. Many people I meet say the are "not religious" but they "are spiritual." I say 6of one and a half-dozen of another.

I know how to laugh, cry, and get angry, so I'm not an emotionless black hole; I just don't think we have a soul and I still don't really know what people mean by "spirituality." WTF is that? Judging from the word, it must, almost by definition, involve a "spirit" or "spirits."

And in regards to "spirituality," one guy that REALLY gets my dander up is below. What a bunch of shite!!
(sorry for the sad face, Flint).

[Spexxvet]

IMHO, religion has been around to explain the unexplainable. When humans didn't know what caused thunder, there was Thor. When they didn't know why the sun travelled across the sky, there was Apollo. The two questions we don't know, these days, are

What are we before we're born and after we die?
and
What created matter/energy in the first place?

Religions say that God/gods created the universe, and try to explain the pre- and after-life. I'm skeptical about that

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Pangloss62

Many people I meet say the are "not religious" but they "are spiritual." I say 6of one and a half-dozen of another.

I know how to laugh, cry, and get angry, so I'm not an emotionless black hole; I just don't think we have a soul and I still don't really know what people mean by "spirituality." WTF is that? Judging from the word, it must, almost by definition, involve a "spirit" or "spirits."

Religion is a social construct desigend for herding people into compliance with accepted standards, or consolidating the power of a ruling class. Religion is the institution, the practices of a codified system.

Spirituality is . . . harder to put your finger on. I will say this: I accept that there are things we don't, and can't, ever know about. Stephen Hawking cites, as a reason why he no longer believes that Physics can acheive a "Theory of Everything", the old paradox of "This statement is false" (if it's false, then it's true, but if it's true, then it was false - it contains an unresolvable contradiction within itself). Much in this same way, he notes that any theory that attempts to describe the universe is describing a universe which also contains us, the ones doing the describing, and therefore it is logically impossible for us to ever remove our own influsence and see a true picture. So, what does this have to do with spirituality? I believe spirituality deals with the unseen forces that we must accept exist, while, on the other hand, "religion" says it's got these forces all figured out, and tells you that it has the easy answers. Spirituality, on the other hand, acknowledges that we haven't got these answers. Spirituality is a recognition that there are things beyond our little human scope. It would be foolish and arrogant to assume otherwise.